It was already 2am by the time we made it to Canal Street, our shoes ruined and soaked through from the slushy New York pavements. Freezing, tired, anxious and totally drained from our long walk, we gazed in unison at the Subway entrance. Only one thing was clear.

The Lady of the Box was totally gone.

Stuck in a tiny corner where her box used to be was a single, solitary photo. It was a picture that told a thousand stories.

On the back was a note addressed to me, in her beautiful elegant one handed script.

"My dear SP," it read,"thank you for all your efforts to find "J" my darling Valentine. I am sorry you never found Jan, I guess he gave up on me, or thought I had been turned into a soup."

At that, Jan shook his head silently and a single tear trickled down from his shining green eyes and warrior mask. "My Lady, I never gave up on you. New York City is a hard place to track a pumpkin lady down particularly after Halloween. You had no faith."

But who was he talking to, the photograph?

The note had a small PS at the back.

"But not to worry, my Princess, the story had a happy ending as Jeff the Trumpet Player from Black Rock City in Nevada fell in love with me and came all the way to Canal Street to rescue me in the hour of my greatest distress. No, he will never be Jan, my first real love, but he has promised to love me simply and faithfully for ever more and now we will be for ever together, hand in hand, in the desert.

Thank you for finding me Jeff. He may not be as sexy and glamorous as Jan but he is a good man and he has promised to teach me how to play the trumpet.

So long SP, visit us next year for the Green Man at Burning Man. "

And so my Valentines tale comes to both a sad and happy end. I looked round to comfort Jan but he too had disappeared into the night, his Dasani bottle the only sign that he had returned to reclaim his true love.

The morale of the story is that " LOVE WAITS FOR NO MAN."